Often things happen in your life and you are so busy dealing with them that you miss the almost imperceptible changes that have occurred in your own existence.

There is a painting that has sat silently on the walls of the several homes I have known over the last almost half a century. The painting is nondescript. It is actually a messy patch of colours daubed on a piece of canvas by a 5 year old and corrected by some master strokes of a young painter. This unique piece of art is signed and dated. Today that young struggling artist is a very famous exponent of Indian art.

A few days back my daughter stormed in asking whether I had got the painting valued. I remained silent . The last few years have been one of intense struggle in our personal lives and much of what was taken for granted taken away from us but somehow till this moment I did not realise how different my life had become. As I read Deepak's words I guess that acceptance and surrender had slipped in my life as a gift from God. it is also strange that the big picture theory that was always propounded by my father whenever something hurt terribly and that been forgotten in the times of plenty, was often quoted by me to assuage every one depending on me for answers and saw me through hard times be they personal or at project why.

What had happened to change the once easily disappointed person into one that accepted life without condition and resistance I do not know. Perhaps it is the fact that seven years back I left my egocentric existence and decided to give back some of what I had received. Maybe it is because the problems that needed to be addressed did not concern me but someone else. I cannot say. i can only share that as my personal resource dwindled to nothing, every time funds were needed to reach out to the children of project why they appeared from nowhere and I saw my once abysmally lonely existence be filled with human beings from he world over.

My daughter's question about the value of the painting came back to my mind. How did one value that painting. Easy some would say: browse the net, get a appraiser and so on. But let me tell you the story that lies hidden in every stroke of that painting. The painting was the result of a little girl's weekly trip to a studio to apparently learn painting. However the little girl carried with her a huge tiffin carrier filled with food that she had been told to 'forget' each time. That forgotten food ensured that the young artist did not go hungry for many days without feeling humiliated. This was probably one of the first lessons my parents crafted painstakingly for me, part of a big picture, one I would understand much later.

So how does one value a painting that hold in it the very essence of what I was to become? This is a question I have no answer to. I hope I can find some way of bequeathing this to my children but here again maybe there is another part of picture I do not see and the painting will land one day in an auctioneer's hall for some very valid reason.

Yes the big picture exists, one just has to open that past of us that has the ability to see it and then life becomes wondrous.

Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)